Page 81 of The Innocent Sleep

“October frequently casts don’t-look-here spells over her car while she drives.”

Simon looked alarmed. “That’s dangerous! The other drivers won’t be able to see me!”

“She says they automatically avoid the space her car occupies, and as she’s yet to have a fatal accident, I’m inclined to believe her.”

“All right,” he said uncertainly. He came to a stop at the next corner, waving a hand and muttering something under his breath. The smell of smoke and cider filled the car, with no trace of oranges, and he sighed before he resumed driving.

“That should do,” he said.

“One hopes.” I glanced at the dial which displayed our speed. “You can go a little faster.”

“Is that safe?”

“No. But the best chance our allies have of making it to the surface comes at sunrise, and if they make it through, they may not be able to stay for long before Titania’s spell reasserts itself and puts them back below. If they can make it, and stay, that gives us one of Titania’s own Firstborn. Even if they can’t stay this time, being able to surface once means she might be able to join us later. I’d rather risk collision than missing them.”

“Do you even know for sure that they’ll be there?”

“No. The wild, unfounded hope is normally October’s department, and it feels odd to depend upon it now. Still, if hope is what we have, then hope must be what we cling to.”

Simon looked thoughtful, and pressed down harder on the gas.

According to the car’s map, which helpfully provided verbal instructions every time we needed to do something, we had started almost five hours’ driving distance from Muir Beach. Even with Simon going as fast as he was comfortable, making it by sunrise was going to be a close thing.

Time isn’t always aligned between the mortal world and the Summerlands, but the duration of holidays and celebrations tends to be set to the mortal clock. We had departed from Golden Shore about an hour after midnight. If we encountered no difficulties and didn’t stop for any reason, we might be able to reach the beach before the dawn arrived and tore down or eroded all standing illusions.

And if we didn’t, we could just hope that anyone who managed to make it to the surface would also be able to stay, at least long enough for us to reach them.

I continued to grip the dashboard, trying not to look out the windows, trying not to think about how much I hated cars. Oh, October was going to laugh and laugh when she heard about this. She was going to consider it the funniest thing that had ever happened, worthy of being commemorated in story and in song. After the number of times I had insisted on taking the shadows rather than allowing her to drive me, when she remembered knowing how to drive and had an actual license, this was going to be endlessly delightful.

I smiled a little, relaxing as I considered her with her memory restored, laughing uproariously at my predicament. Oh, so much of this was going to be funny in retrospect, even as so much of it might rouse her to towering heights of rage.

Human transport was comfortable, certainly. There was air, and light, and no need to keep pouring magic into the journey. That was where the advantages, such as they were, stopped. Human transport was slow. We had gone little more than an hour before August began to snippily ask how much farther we had to go, and less than an hour after that, Garm joined in, the two of them turning the car into a symphony of discontent. The roads were clear; we passed human cities and dark farmsteads without a whisper or a trace. What few other cars we saw were mostly heading in the opposite direction, headlights slashing through the night for a few seconds before they, too, were gone.

And still we weren’t fast enough, and still they endlessly complained, until I slumped down in my seat and muttered to Simon, “Sometimes I am reminded that having children is not always the blessing we would make it out to be.”

He laughed, sounding merry and almost startled, like he hadn’t been expecting me to speak to him. I looked at him more thoughtfully.

“What did you see in the blood?”

“I focused on the driving, to regain those memories,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “But the driving came with some other aspects of the life you say I once lived. I still served my lady, but she felt more free to use me cruelly.”

“More free? You mean she uses you cruelly here?”

Simon looked uncomfortable. “I mean I have felt, at times, that she was constrained by outside factors to keep her ambitions curtailed, and as a consequence, did not put me to all the uses she desired. I saw myself in the car, driving as you said, on my way to sow her influence in the fertile soil of distant courts. I seemed to have no family ties to bind me? And at times a strange woman rode with me, unfamiliar in the present but all too familiar in memory.”

“Oleander,” I supplied.

“The assassin?”

“You kept close company with her in my Faerie, at the command of your patron,” I said. “It wasn’t the most pleasant period in your life.”

“I can’t say I’m eager to know more,” he said, sourly. Then: “I saw October, but only from a distance, as if I had no excuse for approaching her, and I didn’t see August at all.”

“She was missing for much of the time those memories would be drawn from,” I said.

“Ah. And I saw you, beside October. You looked devoted to her; if you found a way to lie to me via your own memory, it seems you also found a way to lie through mine. I suspect not, however. I suspect you are exactly who you’ve claimed to be. I’m sorry this is happening.”

“Is that why you didn’t expect me to talk to you?”